Man injured, 6 pets killed in house fire connected to West Valley homicide

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — A Utah man says he's in shock after a neighbor allegedly set his house on fire Thursday, just after the same neighbor allegedly shot and killed a West Valley City code enforcement officer.

Ryan Luke spent his Thursday morning like he would any other, working in his home office.

“I was just working away and I hear what sounds like a gunshot,” Luke said. “I thought a tire blew out.”

Twenty minutes later, he heard something else.

“Just, BOOM!,” Luke exclaimed, describing the explosion that occurred at his home. “I feel a percussion wave up through my body just like a pressure drop, I can’t explain the feeling."

Luke said he knew something was wrong and ran downstairs where he saw smoke billowing from his basement window.

“When I first opened the door and felt the heat and felt that smoke, you don’t even smell it, it just punches you in the throat and your sinuses, and tells your brain, get away,” Luke explained. “All I cared about was saving my pets."

Luke's cat and five dogs were trapped inside the home.

“I kept running out, big deep breath, run back in, screaming, reaching through, I hear one sound from a dog and it’s just like (mimics the sound of a dog whimpering),” Luke said. “I’m reaching through the handrail trying to get them and they’re not coming, they’re not coming."

Paramedics directed Luke to a grassy patch across the street where he watched as his house burned with his pets inside.

“I feel like I should have done more,” Luke said.

It wasn’t until he was outside that he realized the magnitude of what had happened. Luke saw a body in his neighbor's driveway, it belonged to an unarmed code enforcement officer that had gone to the property for a routine follow-up.

“He was a hoarder, there was a serious problem going on there,” Luke said of his neighbor.